No Lesser Plea (7 page)

DeVonne had scarcely finished her latest service when the door buzzer sounded. Louis rolled away from her, got off the bed, put on a terry cloth bathrobe, and strode through the living room to his front door. He peered through the fish-eye lens set in the door and observed Elvis’s distorted image. He opened the door, admitted his accomplice, and then relocked it elaborately, two dead bolts and a police lock.

Elvis glanced around the living room with pleasure. It had deep white shag rugs, pale leather couches facing across a wood and glass coffee table. Big color TV, big stereo. The most fascinating thing about the room, however, was the bookcase, which covered the entire wall facing the windows. Elvis had never seen so many books in a private residence; there were hundreds of them, neatly racked and arranged by subject and author. The first time he had visited the apartment he blurted out, “Shee-it, man! You read all them books?”

To which Louis had replied with a superior smile, “Yeah, I read them. Some of ’em twice.”

Louis was at the bookcase now, taking down a hardbound copy of
The Shame of Our Prisons.
He carried it over to the coffee table and sat down on one of the couches, motioning Elvis to take a seat opposite him. Louis opened the book, to reveal a cut-out section in its center. In the cutout was a plastic bag, a package of glassine envelopes of the type used by stamp dealers, and a pair of surgical gloves. Louis pulled on the gloves and unrolled the plastic bag. He tapped a tea-spoonful of white powder into one of the glassine envelopes.

“What’s all this, Man?”

“It’s headache powder, what you think?” Louis held the envelope up to the light and tapped it so that the powder fell into a corner and then folded it into quarters. “This is gonna get rid of our little headache. Come on, I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”

Louis went into the bedroom. He left the door open for a moment and Elvis caught a glimpse of a chocolate-brown woman sitting naked on the bed. She caught him staring and flashed a broad and antic grin over Louis’s shoulder as he reemerged. He was carrying the attaché case. Opening it on the coffee table, with the rubber gloves still on, he removed the bank cash bag he had taken from the liquor store. He took out all the cash except a dozen miscellaneous small bills and put in the packet of white powder. He placed the bank bag inside a paper bag and handed it to Elvis.

He said, “Take this down to that hotel where that Snowball’s stayin’ and give it to him. Olympia Hotel, Room Ten. He won’t ask no questions when he see that bag o’ shit. Make sure he shoot up, then get out of there and go back to your own place. And don’t touch nothin’, especially not the damn cash bag. Let him take it, and then take the paper bag with you.”

“What, you put some rat poison in the shit?”

Louis grinned. “No baby, there’s nothing in that bag but shit. Pure shit, that’s all it is. No quinine, no milk sugar, no nothin’. He shoot up what he usually do, figures maybe it be bumped six, seven, ten times—but this ain’t been bumped at all. Cost me a fuckin’ load but it’s worth it, you dig? That boy go out like a light. The cops find him, coupla days, maybe a week, all swole up with the needle still in his arm, what they gonna think? Hey, what the goddam medical examiner gonna think? Heroin overdose, open and shut.”

Elvis was slow, but he could follow this. “And he got the bag from the store on him, so they gonna think …”

Louis’s grin widened. “You got it, Pres. You caught on, good for you. Now look, here’s the most important thing. He got a little piece of paper with my phone number on it. Get that from him before you give him the bag.
Before,
dig? Don’t worry, he give you the key to his momma to get his hands on what you holdin’. OK, take off. I don’t want him jumpin’ out no windows or goin’ nowhere.” He reached into the attaché case again and brought out a roll of cash. “Oh yeah, here’s your share of the job.” He counted off five hundred dollars.

Elvis had never had five hundred dollars in his life. It took all the cool he could muster not to giggle like a schoolboy. He pocketed the loot without a word, gave Louis what he imagined was a gangsterish sort of nod, took the bag, and left the apartment. As he left, he thought of what he had seen in Louis’s bedroom. Fine set of jugs on that girl, he thought. Got to get me one, get some kinda fine setup to put her in. That Louis, now he some kinda dude, he thought. So he strolled toward the subway, money in his jeans, the future bright before him, on his way to commit his very first murder, innocent as a clam.

It took Elvis nearly two hours to get to Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street. He ran into some guys he knew from the street on the way to 137th Street IRT station, and had to jive with them awhile. Then they walked up the avenue a little way, scoping out the girls, and then went into a hat store and tried on some hats. Elvis finally bought a Borsalino for sixty dollars, got to flash his roll, show some class. Sincere, but not efficient, was Elvis.

Two hours was too much for Donald Walker, though. Two
minutes
was too much, if it came to that. The insides of his veins were twitching like poison ivy. He knew he was going to die. Lying on the tangled sheets, looking at the spotted ceiling, his mind lost all comprehension of time; he was a hungry infant at 3:00 A.M. He might have been in that room for a week or a month. Like an infant, he now thought of his mother. Once again, he made his wracked body leave the foul room and move down to the pay phone in the lobby. He dialed his mother’s number; no answer. He was abandoned. He snuffled back his runny nose as tears of frustration ran down his face and bathed the mouthpiece of the telephone.

No mother. Poor Donald! Then he thought of his wife. Same difference. He dialed again, the number of the real estate office in Jackson Heights where his wife worked as a secretary-receptionist. Contact.

“Hello?”

“Ella,” he croaked, “Ella, I …”

“Hello? Donald, is that you? Is something wrong?”

“Ella, I need … I’m sick, baby.”

“Oh no! What’s wrong? Are you in Stamford? Where’s Billy?”

After a chilling silence, the croaking voice resumed.

“Ella, I didn’t go to Stamford. Shit, Ella, I’m in big trouble, I need help!”

“Trouble? What are you talking about, Donald? What kind of trouble? What did you do?”

“Can’t tell you, baby, he kill me. I need … I need some, uh, money.”

“What? Who’s going to kill you? Oh, Donald, Jesus, you didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

“Ella, don’t ask no questions, just get over here with some money.”

“Money! Donald, you come home this minute, you hear! I want to know what you’ve been doing. I can’t believe this …”

“I can’t, dammit! He gonna kill me. I’m sick, godammit to hell!”

Here he gave a groan of such mortal agony that even over the wires his wife realized that whatever her husband had gotten into was outside the zone of ordinary domestic troubles.

“OK, Donnie, be calm, honey. What do you want me to do?”

“Bring some money, anything, and some clothes. I’m at the Olympia Hotel on Tenth Avenue. Room Ten. And hurry, Ella, huh?” The line went dead. After that, Ella Walker went to the ladies’ room, sat in a booth, and cried for a while. Then she washed her face and returned to her desk. As she had learned to do from earliest childhood, she now turned to her family in time of trouble. With trembling hand she punched out the number of the Midtown South Precinct and asked to speak with her brother, Detective Second Class Emerson Dunbar, Homicide.

When his sister called, Sonny Dunbar was walking down Eighth Avenue in the lower Forties, with the beginnings of a nasty headache, doing his job, but not liking it very much. His job at that moment was looking for a skell named Dingleberry, who, according to a snitch named Rufus, had been seen lately in the company of a prostitute named Booey Starr, or (if you were her mother), Francine Williams, now deceased. Since Booey had probably not hit herself in the head with a claw hammer twenty or so times, her death had been duly judged a homicide and added to the 153 open cases that were Dunbar’s particular responsibility.

Dunbar had been a New York cop for fifteen years, a detective for ten. Before that he had jumped out of some airplanes for the U.S. Army and before that he had gone to high school in Queens, about two miles from where he now lived, in St. Albans. His high-school career had been undistinguished, except on the football field, where he turned out to be very good at stopping other players from catching footballs, or if they did catch them, stopping them from running very far. He was an All-State safety on two teams, got the usual offers from faraway schools and turned them all down.

This was remarkable, but Sonny Dunbar had always taken the long view. He hated classrooms, and knew he wasn’t good enough for a sure slot in the pros. He didn’t care to be another Big Ten black jock with a meaningless B.A. in phys ed. So he enlisted, spent three years with the airborne as an MP, figured he was tough enough for anything after that, and joined the cops.

He had put on about ten pounds in the years since, which hardly showed on his wide-shouldered, six-two, two-hundred-pound frame. He didn’t like the way some cops let themselves get sloppy, and he had a reputation on the squad as something of a dude, not as splendid, perhaps, as the members of the special narcotics squads, but his wardrobe came out of his own pocket. It helped that his wife was an executive with a restaurant chain.

Today he was wearing a cream-linen jacket, tan slacks, lemon-yellow shirt, and a dark-blue silk tie. He had cordovan tassel loafers (no gumshoes for him) on his feet and a cream fedora on his head. And sunglasses; Sonny Dunbar was definitely Broadway. He had left his car at a cab stand on 43rd and was cutting across Eighth to a drug store for an Alka-Seltzer. Moving fast, he was just about to enter its doorway when the thought hit him that he had a roll of film in the car that he had promised to bring in for developing two days ago. Almost without any conscious effort, he hit the pivot and began moving in the opposite direction, and a kid in sneakers carrying a large leather handbag crashed into him at full speed.

Dunbar staggered, but the kid went sprawling and banged his head on a parking meter. Dunbar was about to apologize and help the kid to his feet, when he noticed the big handbag. Although many young men in that area of New York carried handbags, this particular young man did not look like that kind of young man. He was wearing a dirty brown jacket, jeans, and the expensive athletic footwear that street cops call “perp shoes.”

Dunbar’s impression that the kid was a Times Square bandit was soon confirmed by a distraught woman, blonde, and well dressed in an arty way, who came dashing unsteadily up the street in heeled boots. “There he is! He took my bag,” she shouted. “Somebody get a cop! Oh, thank God!” She addressed this last remark not to heaven but to her handbag, which she clutched to her breast like a lost child. “Thank God! My entire LIFE is in this bag.” She noticed Dunbar, who was staring glumly at the fallen robber. “Say, mister, did you catch him? Listen, can you hold onto him while I go and call the cops?”

Dunbar thought, just my luck, a solid citizen. He said, “Well, Miss, that won’t be necessary. I happen to be a police officer.” He pulled out his gold shield and showed it to her.

The woman laughed. “Unbelievable!”

“Yeah, ain’t it, though,” answered Dunbar, with very little enthusiasm. He wrote down the woman’s name and address and then hauled the young robber to his feet. The kid tried to shake off Dunbar’s grip.

“Hey, man, wha chu doin’? I din do nothin’.” Dunbar pushed him against a wall, back cuffed him in one smooth motion, and then patted him down, extracting a large sheath knife from his jacket pocket.

“Right, mutt, you din do nothin’, but I’m going to arrest you for purse snatching anyway. Let’s go.”

Half an hour later, after the perp had been booked and caged at the Midtown South Precinct, Dunbar was rummaging through his desk for a package of Alka-Seltzer, when Petromani, the desk sergeant, came into the squad room. “Sonny, call your sister Ella. What’re you looking for?”

“Alka-Seltzer. My head’s coming off. You got any?”

“I got aspirin and Tylenol. I got Empirin and I think I got something for menstrual cramps. Listen, you should call your sister, she sounded really uptight.”

“Yeah, the toilet probably won’t flush. My brother-in-law is not what you call a take-charge individual, so she still calls me when something goes wrong.” He reached for the phone.

Petromani said, “I heard the story on that collar you made. It’s great the way you detectives track down criminals by putting together all these tiny clues …”

Dunbar grinned. “Aww, it was just perseverance, solid old-fashioned police work, and fucking bad luck. I’m going to waste half tonight in the complaint room.” Petromani waved and left. Dunbar dialed his sister’s office. The phone rang just once and his sister’s voice said, “Barnes and Franklin, good morning.”

“It’s Sonny. What’s up, girl?”

“Oh, Sonny, thank God! I’m worried out of my head.”

“What is it, the kids?”

“No, they’re fine. It’s Donnie. I got the scariest phone call from him. He says he’s in this hotel, and he’s sick, and he told me to bring him money and clothes. Sonny, I never heard him sound like that before.”

“Was he drunk? Did you tell him to come home?”

“That’s the first thing I told him. But he said somebody was going to kill him if he left the hotel. I didn’t know what to do.” She started to cry.

“OK, calm down, sugar. It’s probably nothing much. Maybe he got fired and wants to soften you up. You know how Donnie is.” Dunbar had little respect for his brother-in-law, but he was grateful to him for paying attention to the youngest and least attractive of the four Dunbar sisters, marrying her, and giving her the home and children she had always wanted. He sort of liked the little jerk in spite of himself. Donnie was a baby, but he could be funny and charming, in his way.

Ella blew her nose and said, “No, he sounded
bad,
Sonny. I hate to bother you and all, but could you go over and see him?”